Watching George St-Pierre (MMA legend) popping shark cartilage pills was the first time I obsessed over glucosamine. His analogy when he brought up shark cartilage was that your body is like a car. Athletes like him treat their bodies like Ferraris meaning they need premium fuel. After hearing this I thought man, I’m at least a ford mustang, why haven’t I used this savage supplement before? I wouldn’t be surprised if you found glucosamine in a convenience store nowadays although it may not be from a shark.

Little did I know how popular this question was until I was in the process of googling it. Without even finishing the phrase “Do I need a pe” Google automatically gave me “Do I need a personal trainer?” and not “Do I need a pet?” as a drop-down option. Quite frankly, this made me realize that this question is on the mind of almost anyone deciding to make a change for their health. So I began looking deeper into the search results for this question and they were pretty underwhelming.

Pain is described by many as a hurtful experience related to tissue damage, but stopping at that would only explain a small aspect of this complex experience. Rather, it is better to think of pain as the ultimate output. It scrutinizes multiple inputs including but not limited to hurt/damage. We now understand that emotional state, memories of past experiences, context, body location, and cultural beliefs are also relevant inputs. The combination of these inputs is often required to create something deemed as pain and it is explained best by Melzack’s Neuromatrix Theory of Pain. His theory describes pain as being comprised of three domains.

After speaking to hundreds of clients in Mississauga about their training injuries over the past year, I realized that nearly everyone used cold application differently. A popular misconception is that you are reaping all the benefits from icing as long as you apply some form of it to any type of injury. Not only can incorrect application of ice prove to be ineffective, it may even do the opposite of what was intended and become damaging to the body. Yes, there are some inherent physical differences in people that call for more or less cold application. Apart from that research has presented ideal parameters including temperature, duration, method, and purpose that everyone should be aware.